What's happening at the Las Vegas Chamber?
Inside Liberty Watch Today - March 18, 2006

Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, lobbyist Christina Dugan vs. Senator Bob Beers on "Nevada Newsmakers" talking "TASC" Tax and Spend Control with Bob Beers. Christina did not do well. Please understand, that is not a personal criticism. Her bosses sent her into the arena completely disarmed. She was stuck with a fundamentally false assumption and a set of positions that amount to a house of cards built on a foundation of quicksand.

The Chamber Board is acting on the incredibly foolish notion that the private sector business community is still the dominant force in the legislative process. If that were true then keeping the system of lobbying and behind the scenes wheeling and dealing intact would be perfectly ok. However, that world is long gone. A new faction has risen to take control of policy making in Nevada.

With nearly half of the legislature being government employees or spouses of government employees the policy making power has slipped out of the hands of the private sector into the new dominant "industry" - government itself. Are you completely irrelevant? No, just mostly and getting weaker with each election cycle.

The Chamber Board just doesn't get it. They really believe they can "do business" with the government employee/elected officials and their activist colleagues. Maybe they can, as long as it suites governments interest. However, as soon as push comes to shove watch out, the 2003 legislature was not an aberration, it was the future.

Since the Chamber Board and other private sector business organizations won't aggressively move to retake what was once theirs, the only hope left for regaining private sector control of the governing process is "TASC" Tax and Spend Control.

There may indeed be "unintended consequences" in "TASC" but they are nothing compared to the unintended consequences inherent in allowing government insiders to control the policy making process.

Liberty Watch Reader, Knight Allen


Nevada Newsmakers
I you would like to view the Dugan vs. Beers debate, just click onto the link provided.

Link: www.nevadanewsmakers.com